Trust and Lies Theme Analysis

When readers first meet Maddy, she completely trusts the two people with whom she has the most contact: Mom and Carla, her nurse. Mom and Carla prize trust, openness, and honesty over all else, and they teach Maddy to do the same. However, Maddy has new revelations about honesty as she grows up, falls in love with the neighbor boy Olly, and embarks on a secret trip with him to Hawaii. She begins to see the truth as more of a gray area than Mom in particular has led her to believe but learns that while lying may have its place (and may, at times, be worth it), that doesn’t mean that lying doesn’t bring major consequences along with it. Ultimately, Everything, Everything situates lying as something that everyone does, no matter who they are—but while lying may be a normal part of growing up for teens, the novel suggests that an adult using their authority to lie to a minor is unavoidably egregious and damaging for all.

Throughout Maddy’s life, her relationship with Mom has been open and trusting by necessity. Aside from Carla, there’s no one else Maddy sees in person regularly, which means that Mom is Maddy’s sole source of entertainment, wisdom, and love, aside from the internet. This has, over the years, created what seems at first to be a close and tender relationship between mother and daughter. They have weekly fancy dinners together, play unique games like Phonetic Scrabble, and importantly, don’t keep secrets from each other. Because of this, it’s extremely uncomfortable for Maddy when Olly moves in next door and she finds herself attracted to him. This is the first time that Maddy has felt attraction for a real person, but it’s also the first time she’s ever kept a secret from Mom.

Maddy’s discomfort, and later, Mom’s reaction when Maddy begins to pull away from her to instant message Olly or think about him by herself, begins to suggest that there’s more to their relationship than just innocent closeness. Maddy has an unusual amount of discomfort and anxiety about having a crush—an entirely normal thing for an 18-year-old to experience—and Mom is similarly anxious that Maddy seems different. These reactions begin to suggest that what Maddy believes is a family culture of genuine truth and openness is actually one in which members are required to sacrifice their privacy or suffer consequences. Importantly, the consequences Maddy eventually experiences for her “transgression” don’t actually encourage her to be any more truthful with Mom—instead, she becomes even less truthful and embarks on a trip to Hawaii without telling Mom where she’s going.

Though Maddy congratulates herself for much of her relationship with Olly for never lying to him, she does have to lie in order to convince him to go to Hawaii with her. To assure him that she’s going to be safe in the outside world, Maddy tells him that she bought pills from Canada that will delay any possible reaction to her SCID triggers. Importantly, Maddy can tell that Olly doesn’t really believe her, and yet he chooses to trust her and accompany her to Hawaii anyway. When taken in conjunction with Maddy’s choice to lie to her mom about going to Hawaii in the first place, this begins to suggest that to some degree, lying is a normal part of growing up and developing a sense of independence and agency. Further, Olly essentially ignoring Maddy’s lie and choosing to go with her anyway allows him and Maddy to build intimacy and develop their relationship in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. This, again, leaves open the possibility that Maddy’s lie was, in the long run, a positive thing for their relationship and her development.

Most importantly for Maddy, lying to Mom about Hawaii leads to her discovery that Mom lied about Maddy’s diagnosis: Maddy doesn’t have, and never had, SCID. Maddy only learns this because her illness and hospitalization in Hawaii is the first time since infancy that a doctor other than her mom has seen her. Maddy is understandably angry when she discovers that Mom lied to her. Because of the lie, Maddy was denied a real childhood, friends, and school experience in favor of a sanitized existence in which Mom controlled nearly everything Maddy did, experienced, ate, and saw. It’s possible, then, to see Maddy’s lie about Hawaii as one that is hurtful in the short term but that allows Maddy to grow as an individual and leads her to discover vital information about herself. In contrast, Mom’s lie about Maddy’s diagnosis is one that actively harms Maddy and deprives her of everything life has to offer, both positive and negative. Through this, Everything, Everything makes the case that teens lying—to their parents and to each other—is a normal part of development that can lead to new information, experiences, and growth, even if the lie causes discomfort, fear, and anger in the moment. When adults lie to their children, however—especially when they do so to control their children’s bodies and lives—lying becomes an unforgivable and sinister offense.